Practical Interfaith: How to Find Our Common Humanity as We Celebrate Diversity

By Rev. Steven Greenebaum

Interfaith as a Faith―A Way to Move Past Preaching about Love and Compassion to Actually Practicing Them

"A commitment to Interfaith is no small commitment. Nor is it an easy commitment. But I do believe it can be a rewarding and healing one. Interfaith widens our world. And, if we let it, Interfaith frees us from the imprisoning shackles of one of the most debilitating of all human emotions―fear of the 'other.'"

―from Chapter 6

The interfaith movement is taking root. More and more of us are exploring it. At the same time interfaith finds itself at a crossroads. Where do we go now?

Rev. Steven Greenebaum not only suggests the faith of Interfaith as a positive way forward but also offers a practical, down-to-earth approach to a more spiritually fulfilling life. In this accessible how-to guide, Greenebaum addresses:

What it means to practice Interfaith as a faith and why you might want to embrace it.

Why you can choose Interfaith as a faith and still keep your own spiritual tradition.

How to establish the necessary foundations to start an Interfaith spiritual community.

How to choose the right minister for your Interfaith community.

What you can expect as your community forms and grows.

And much, much more.

Along with offering resources such as Interfaith liturgy and guides to Interfaith church governance, he includes the voices of members of the Living Interfaith Church, the community he founded, to share their whys and hows of participating in an Interfaith church.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
• Release date: Oct 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781594735905

Rev. Steven Greenebaum

Rev. Steven Greenebaum, an Interfaith minister and founder of Living Interfaith Church in Lynnwood, Washington, is the author of The Interfaith Alternative. Featured in the New York Times, he speaks and leads workshops on Interfaith and compassion as the core of our diverse spiritual traditions throughout the United States and Canada.

Book preview

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To all, throughout history, who put love

and compassion above doctrine and sect.

Contents

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Preface

Part I   The Call of Interfaith

1.   Interfaith as a Faith

2.   Guides or Rulebooks?

3.   Why Are Our Paths So Different?

4.   What We Call It Matters

5.   A Blasphemous Look at Blasphemy

Voices of Interfaith

Part II    Day-to-Day Interfaith

6.   The Decision to Act

7.   Why Interfaith Can Be Hard

8.   What Does It Mean to Practice Interfaith?

9.   The Foundation of Interfaith Dialogue

10.   Broadening the Dialogue

Voices of Interfaith

Part III    Starting an Interfaith Church

11.   Holding Safe, Sacred Space

12.   Foundations for Starting an Interfaith Spiritual Community

13.   The Road to Living Interfaith

14.   Joys and Bumps along the Way

15.   Some Thoughts on Interfaith Ministry

Voices of Interfaith

Part IV    Resources for an Interfaith Community

16.   Choosing an Interfaith Minister

17.   I Think I Want to Be an Interfaith Minister

18.   Anatomy of an Interfaith Service

19.   Some Interfaith Liturgy

Conclusion: Where Do We Go from Here?

Appendix: Possibly Helpful Documents

Notes

Suggestions for Further Reading

About the Author

Copyright

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Preface

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It’s news to no one that we live in a world in conflict. I must confess that it still amazes me how adept and creative we are at finding ways to divide ourselves into us and them. If we ever find life in space, I have no doubt that there will immediately arise an Earth versus whomever drumbeat. Since we haven’t, at least as yet, we must settle for somewhat less cosmic divisions. We have blocs of countries in constant tension if not at war with other blocs, as well as individual countries lining up against one another. Within countries we have gender divisions, age divisions, ethnic divisions, racial divisions, and territorial divisions, to name just a few. In the United States, as example, we take pride in our state, our city, and perhaps even our neighborhood. Some of us are actually willing to come to blows over our sports teams.

One of our most ancient and destructive divisions has to do with our spiritual paths. The truth of it is, we have been hating and slaughtering each other over differences about God (or no God) for millennia. In my first book, The Interfaith Alternative, I tried to chronicle the how and why of this.

When I wrote The Interfaith Alternative, I drew on a lifetime of experience. There were many a twist and turn, and more than a few surprises, in the evolution of my spiritual self as I struggled to understand and then to communicate Interfaith as a faith among our spiritual paths.

I prefer to use the term spiritual path rather than religion, for the simple but important reason that many of our spiritual paths aren’t religions. We’ll look at this more deeply later in this book, but for now, consider that Humanism is a spiritual path but not a religion. Buddhism likewise is a spiritual path but not a religion. In The Interfaith Alternative, I looked at the poisonous paradigm of right belief, the idea that there is one and only one right answer to the question of God. I then asked, Is there an alternative to this paradigm? And there is. There is an Interfaith alternative, grounded in a theology broad enough to include us all.

Also, while I have no hesitation referring to God, I will frequently speak of the sacred. Why? I believe in God, but I know and respect that not all of us do. What we all hold in common, whether we believe in God or not, is a sense of the sacred—spiritual matters that we hold close, that can help guide us toward our shared goal of love, compassion, and community.

Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Humanism, Baha’ism, and countless other beautiful and profound spiritual paths can all lead us to the sacred. They can all be righteous paths. But they can also lead us astray—all of them. What Interfaith teaches us is that it is not the path we walk, but how we walk our path that counts.

And that’s pretty much where The Interfaith Alternative ends. The book was intended to be, and I hope remains, a call for us to put aside our us-and-them outlook on our spiritual lives. When I self-identify by saying my faith is Interfaith and my spiritual path is Judaism, I am acknowledging not only that there are a multitude of spiritual paths that might be walked, but that they can also be good and profound paths. At the same moment I am saying that the path I happen to walk is Judaism—not because Judaism provides the one right path for the world, but because Judaism has, throughout my life, been the path that has been the most helpful to me in guiding me toward a life of love, compassion, and community. At the same moment I know and happily acknowledge that I have friends who walk the path of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Humanism, the Baha’i, and others, whose paths have helped guide them to lives of love, compassion, and community. The call of The Interfaith Alternative is to show that it’s not only possible to put aside the one-size-fits-all or my-way-or-the-highway approach to our spiritual lives, but actually desirable. Just as important, we need not put aside or abandon our own spiritual paths in order to respect and honor the paths of others.

The response to the book has for the most part been hugely gratifying and positive. But in my travels and discussions, three questions in particular have been raised over and over again:

1. Interfaith sounds wonderful, I’m told by many (but clearly not all, and I deeply respect that). But do I have to leave my own spiritual path to join?

2. There aren’t any Interfaith churches near me. How do we start one?

3. Interfaith sounds like a wonderful way to live, but how do we get there?

These practical questions are the reason for this book, Practical Interfaith. The Interfaith Alternative was intended as a welcoming introduction to Interfaith as a faith. We examined the why of Interfaith and explored a theological framework for it. Here I want to continue the welcome, as we further explore and develop Interfaith as a faith, and then examine the exciting and important questions What can I do? and How can I get involved? A simple word of caution: This book is a deeply personal document that explores Interfaith as a faith, and how we can make it work. It is not intended as a comprehensive overview of interfaith relations.

One interesting thing that they don’t think to teach you in seminary is how to start a new faith community. I’ve pretty much had to invent things as I go. As I write this, Living Interfaith Church is completing its fourth year. In hopes that you will not have to reinvent the wheel, I’ve tried to put down here some of what we’ve learned, what we as a new spiritual community based on Interfaith have learned—what has worked, and, quite frankly, what hasn’t. The purpose of writing this is not to establish the one right way to form an Interfaith church. Rather, here is what we did (and it has very much been a we experience) and why and how it worked out. Hopefully, others will build on this start, for it is clearly only a start.

Also, while my hope is that at least most of the readers of this book will have read The Interfaith Alternative before exploring here, I realize that some—in fact, many—have not. So Part One, The Call of Interfaith, is intended as a broadening review for those who have read The Interfaith Alternative and a rather condensed introduction to Interfaith for those who haven’t.

I understand and respect that all of us will approach Interfaith and this book a little differently. Still, my hope is that you will feel inclined, perhaps having read the book once, to read it again as part of a group of three or four or more. Particularly with these readers in mind, each chapter concludes with a page titled, A Bit Deeper: Questions for Discussion. Here you’ll find some questions designed to help readers discuss and explore both the chapter they’ve been reading and the spiritual thoughts of fellow readers.

At the end of each section of the book are Voices of Interfaith. I thought it would be of interest to hear a few voices other than mine! I asked members of Living Interfaith to share in a few paragraphs their spiritual journeys and how they ended up as members of the Living Interfaith Church. They have done so eloquently, and it is a pleasure to share their thoughts with you.

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Interfaith as a Faith

We live in hugely troubled times. Isn’t it time for humanity to come together and embrace our spiritual diversity, rather than coming to blows over it? Isn’t it time to recognize that all of our spiritual paths have called on us—begged us—to shelve our hate, to step outside of our divided worlds, and to come together in love, compassion, and community? Isn’t it at long last time to unite in common purpose to address the problems that have plagued us separately for so very long? If so, just how might we manage this small miracle? One possible answer is Interfaith as a faith, a faith that calls us to embrace and celebrate our spiritual diversity.

I presented Interfaith as a faith in my first book, The Interfaith Alternative. After it was published, I went on a book tour and was told rather pointedly at more than one of my stops that if there is one thing humanity does not need it’s another religion. Whether one agrees with that statement or not, what it told me was that there may be some confusion between faith and religion. It is important to understand that Interfaith is not a new religion but, rather, a faith that may offer us a powerful and positive way to move forward.

So what’s the difference?

Put simply, a religion is a systematized faith, rooted in culture. Every religion, like every language, has its own vocabulary and grammar. Indeed, I think it is helpful to think of our varying religions as languages for speaking to and about God and the sacred. Some languages are similar to each other or even related to each other, while others are vastly different. This doesn’t make one language right and another wrong. It means that differing languages have differing rules that make them unique and powerful modes of expression.

The Faith of Interfaith

Interfaith, as a faith, does not seek to create a new sacred language. Rather, it teaches that whatever our sacred language, it is what we say with it that is truly important. Just as we can write works of both profound beauty and vile pornography in any language, so we can live a life of justice and compassion or a life of arrogant small-mindedness walking any of our spiritual paths. This being the case, Interfaith tells us that what truly counts is not the religion we practice but how we practice our religion.

Interfaith also acknowledges that there is more to our spiritual selves than just our established religions. As already noted, Buddhism and Humanism are not considered religions. For this reason I prefer to refer to our spiritual paths, rather than religions. Our spiritual paths are the sacred beliefs—that may or may not include belief in the Divine—that inform the way we walk, structured or not, toward the universal goal of a meaningful and fulfilling life. Thus, while all religions are spiritual paths, not all spiritual paths are religions.

Interfaith, as a faith, teaches us that our spiritual paths are hugely important. The truth is that none of us would be who we are if we did not believe what we believe. Yet Interfaith embraces as a foundational article of our faith that there are many right paths to the sacred. As a beautiful Japanese folk saying puts it, There are many roads to the top of Mount Fuji. So, to rephrase the point we made a few moments ago, it is not the spiritual path we walk, but how we walk our path that determines the kind of life we will lead.

More than that, Interfaith teaches that our spiritual paths should not be seen as isolated. Rather, our differing paths are connected by our common humanity. As the English poet John Donne might have put it, no spiritual path is an island, entire of itself. Each path is a piece of the continent, a part of the whole.

The Dilemma of Right Belief

If each path is a part of the whole, what then do we do about our contradictory doctrines of right belief? The essence of the quandary is this: Many if not most of our spiritual paths have, at least at one time or another, preached that they hold the one and only right answer to the question of God, that theirs is the one and only right spiritual path. It is this specific sense of proprietary rightness that I refer to when I use the term right belief. It is the idea that there is one and only one right way to approach the sacred, only one right way to perceive the holy, only one right way to believe in God, and thus only one right spiritual path. Foundational to Interfaith is that there is no one right spiritual path. How can we reconcile this?

Interfaith looks to the essential core of all of our spiritual paths and recognizes that at the core of all of them lie the same teachings—that we should love one another, act with compassion and in community. At its simplest, this is expressed by what has been called the Golden Rule, which can be found woven into every spiritual path, on every continent, throughout human history.¹ Interfaith takes as a basic article of faith that these teachings of love, compassion, and community are what lie at the core of the sacred, not our doctrinal and dogmatic differences. This deceptively simple article of faith is, in fact, a sea change in how we relate both to the sacred and to each other. Our differences are not to be ignored